I returned from my jog this afternoon to find a friend request on Facebook from none other than Mr. Dick in a Box himself. My first reaction was, of course, "GAAHHHH!!" I retired to stretch and think it over. I have a couple of options, of course. I can ignore it for awhile and continue to think it over. I can decline, and even block him. I can allow him to see my limited profile, or I could hold my breath, take the plunge, and just approve him fully. Do I really want to be petty about this? But, more importantly, do I really want to allow him access to the cyber side of my life?
This is the weird thing about Facebook. As Jo and Tim have said, it's just unnatural. We are meant to lose touch with these randoms from high school or whatnot whom we have not thought about in years. I mean, sure, it's fun at first to find out that a girl you had at your seventh birthday party is getting married tomorrow, but when you start approving friend requests from people because you vaguely recognize their name and then have to quiz your actual friends about whether or not you DO know so and so, it's a problem. And in that same vein, if you stop returning phone calls from a guy because he gift-wrapped his genitalia on your third date, you should be able to wallow in the luxury of never having to hear from him again--once he takes the hint, of course.
Yes, I am feeling guilty about not manning up and telling him politely that he should find some other tree to put his presents under, but it just seemed easier at the time to ignore it all, and hope desperately that he didn't show up at my workplace. I guess this is karma. For the record, he's apparently in a relationship now, so I can safely assume that he's not going to be offering me any more gifts.
Anyway, for now I'm sitting on it, but it's going to be there, bothering me, everytime I open Facebook from now on. Avoiding people in cyberspace is hard. I leave my MSN messenger signed in and set to away pretty much 24/7, just so that if people I don't feel like talking to message me, I can pretend I'm not there plausibly. I read this today, and while it's not precisely the same sort of situation, you just have to think that all this access is... not good.
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I've got a few random Facebook friends who I really don't have much idea who they are. Most of them, I think, are readers of my blog who looked me up, so if they want to be friends, sure, why not? (Note, this somewhat tentative acceptance sounds like a description of our own Facebook relationship. It isn't. For one thing, HOLY FUCK A GIANT BUG JUST LANDED ON MY FINGER
Sorry. That really threw me. It was like a crazy beetle. I threw it off and it landed on its back on the floor and got stuck there until I squashed it in some toilet paper and flushed it. Anyway, I was going to say that I read and was amused by your blog in the pre-Facebook era, and it now turns out that you're actually one of the most amusing people on Facebook. Your photo captions are always very charming. So, to end the parenthetical statement, you're a model Facebook friend.)
Anyway, I know what you mean. I've had the old classmates popping up, even ones I didn't talk to much in school. Even if you remember them, what do you say? One girl asked me what I'd been up to in the last twenty years or so, which is kind of a hard thing to sum up. I just said I'd been doing the same things I used to do -- playing marbles and kissing tag. And yesterday, one of the girls who worked in my company cafeteria looked me up. I'm not sure what I have to say to her besides "May I please have a BLT with egg and cheese?"
However, the good thing about Facebook friendships is that they're incredibly low-maintenance. It seems that the people you haven't talked to in years are usually happy to exchange a few sentences and then go right back to not talking to you again.
I don't know what to tell you about Mr. Dick-in-a-Box, though. To play Devil's advocate, I might mention that the third date seems to traditionally be a make-or-break affair. (Side note: My last third date was the one where the girl completely lost interest and stopped returning calls.) So if the first two went really well, I suppose he might have felt he had some sort of reasonable expectation for some kind of action. He went about it completely wrong, obviously, but at least he gave you a really great story -- a traumatizing incident, maybe, but also a great story.
Hurray, I'm a model FB friend! I must say, I always enjoy your status changes. Anyway, at least we had been reading each other's blogs, rather than having a one-sided, stalker-esque relationship. And I'm sure one day we'll run into each other, probably in the most awkward circumstances possible.
As for Mr. DITB... weeeelll... to be completely honest, I was pretty much feeling the end of the affair after the second date. He managed to suffocate me over the phone. I admit, I'm extremely sensitive to being crowded by guys I'm dating. Call me too often or too soon, and I'm out. He did both. But I thought hey, I'm being ridiculous, let's try one more date. And now, it's true, I have a fabulous bad date story. After reading some stuff on nerve.com, I have, in fact, come to the conclusion that I should date more and less pickily, just to get more of these stories.
Re: giant bug... I would have freaked the hell out and gone after it with a vacuum cleaner. And then scrubbed my hands. And possibly wept in the corner.
Well, considering I pass through your neighborhood every Sunday afternoon, we really should just get lunch sometime or something. We can work out which creepy characters I can set you up with to flesh out your repertoire of bad-date stories.
I have a nagging feeling that I've had a worse one since that I've simply blocked from memory, but my longstanding bad-date benchmark was set on my first date with my ex-girlfriend Michelle, who got food poisoning and spent a long time throwing up before passing out in the bathroom. I was pretty convinced she'd run out the back door of the restaurant before she finally stumbled back to the table. I paid the cheque in a hurry (even though her dinner was untouched, it having been her drink that did her in), hustled her into a cab, and was lying on my own bed by 9:30 p.m. staring at the ceiling and wondering what the hell had happened.
Sounds like a plan to me. Although if you set me up with creepy characters so that I can relay my new, hilarious stories in my own inimitable fashion, does that qualify as a sting operation? If so, we'll need code names.
I believe it would indeed count as a sting operation, but it would be no one's fault but their own.
You would think that the subject of code names would have been on the curriculum in Fabrication and Lies 101. I'll tell you what: I'll come up with one for you, and you can come up with one for me. Befitting your role as the treacherous seductress in the operation, you can be Honeybee -- sweet, but with a deadly stinger. (Also: sensitive to ultraviolet frequencies.)
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